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Celebrating The Feast of the Seven Fishes in Brooklyn
The Feast of the Seven Fishes is an Italian-American celebration held on Christmas Eve, consisting of seven different seafood dishes.
NEW YORK - Christmas Eve is an extra meaningful night for the Virtuoso family of Brooklyn.
Filomena, the matriarch of this family, invited us into her home in Williamsburg. The smell of fresh seafood and wine in the air. She'd been cooking for nearly 24 hours to prepare for the Feast of the Seven Fishes.
Fried bacalao, shrimp, black muscles, baked clams and scungilli are just a few of the prepared dishes.
The Feast of the Seven Fishes, where generally at least seven different seafood dishes are prepared, is a decades-old Christmas Eve tradition for Italian-Americans.
No one here was completely sure why they devour seafood on this night but all that really matters is that they're all together with full bellies.
"I guess we all have different beliefs but I think we believe is that it has something to do with Christ at the last supper had a lot of fish so I think that's one of the reasons why we believe in it," said Michael, one of the family members.
Another, Jerry, chimed in: "Just everybody sitting around the table to talk—that's something that's kind of lost today."